Palestinian unity push angers Israel

Cairo: The United States said it was "disappointed" and Israel convened an extraordinary meeting of its security cabinet to consider sanctions after the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announced plans for a unity government of the Palestinian Authority, seven years after a violent split created rival governments.

The US State Department said the pact - agreed between the Islamist group Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Liberation Organisation - could make peace efforts difficult.

"The timing was troubling, and we were certainly disappointed in the announcement," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Washington sends about $500 million to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority each year. Frustrated members of the US Congress, who are generally strong supporters of Israel, said that money could be cut off.

Even before the deal with signed, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly warned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: "Does he want peace with Hamas, or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other."

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Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee member Saeb Erekat said it was Mr Netanyahu who did not want peace.

"Mr Netanyahu and his government were using Palestinian division as an excuse not to make peace. Now they want to use Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse for the same purpose," Dr Erekat said. "During the past nine months of negotiations, Mr Netanyahu's government has increased settlement construction, home demolitions, killings, detentions and military raids."

A Palestinian woman waves the national flag as she celebrates the agreement to form a unity government in Gaza. Photo: AFP

The deal involves Mr Abbas forming a new unity government of technocrats over the next five weeks, in order to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections within six months. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank responded with scepticism, pointing to several past agreements that had failed.

Soon after the pact was announced, Israel launched an airstrike in Gaza's north, wounding 12 people, local medics reported.

However the attack apparently missed its mark, Reuters reported, with the Israel Defence Forces saying they had carried out a "counter-terrorism operation" in the northern Gaza Strip but that "a hit was not identified".

Three rockets were then fired from Gaza into southern Israel, one hitting the Erez border crossing, an IDF spokesman reported. There were no reports of injuries.

Despite their cynicism over the prospects of a unity deal, Palestinians have long hoped for an end to the hostilities between Mr Abbas' Western-backed Fatah and Hamas, which won the Palestinian Authority elections in January 2006. After a unity government was formed in March 2007, an attempted coup by Fatah in June of that year left it in control of the West Bank and Hamas in control of Gaza.

Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas-led government in Gaza, told a news conference on Wednesday: "I announce to our people the news that the years of split are over."

But, as Mkhaimar Abusada, associate professor of political science at al-Azhar University in Gaza warned, there are no guarantees the agreement will move from paper to reality.

"We don’t know if they will be able to agree on the composition of the next government or who will be prime minister," Professor Abusada said.

There was suspicion in the West Bank too, with Ghassan Khatib, the vice-president of Birzeit University and a former Palestinian Authority minister, warning there was no way of knowing whether the unity deal would endure.

"Until now there have been several agreements that have been signed and celebrated by the two sides but none of them moved practically to reconciliation," Dr Khatib said.

"That is why the public here is very cautious – they are saying 'we will believe it when we see it'."

The failure of the renewed nine-months-long peace process with Israel had pushed Mr Abbas to look to other fronts on which he might make progress, such as reconciliation with Hamas, Dr Khatib said.

Predictably, Israel had responded in a "negative and threatening way" to the move, he said.

The US and the EU have designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation, while Australia lists Hamas’ military wing as a terrorist organisation.

If the deal does hold, unlike the Doha deal signed in 2011 or the Cairo agreement signed in 2013, there will be benefits for Palestinians trapped in Gaza and suffering daily blackouts and a contaminated water supply.

Along with Israel’s all but complete blockade of Gaza, Egypt has also locked down its border with the 42-kilometre-long coastal strip, preventing thousands of Palestinians from studying, visiting relatives or accessing vital medical treatment in Egypt.

“Hamas has clearly reached the conclusion that the Egyptians are not going to ease the relationship with Palestinians in Gaza without a new, reconciled government and that has pushed them to reconcile with the PLO,” Professor Abusada said.

“The minute there is a new government the Egyptians will open the Rafah border crossing and ease the restrictions,” he said.

Since the overthrow of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Mursi, Egypt's military has tightened its grip on its border with Gaza, viewing the Hamas government as hostile because of its links to the Brotherhood.

“We are already in such bad shape – we are seven years into the Israeli blockade, plus the closure of the tunnels [used to smuggle goods from Egypt] and the Rafah crossing – we hope that this reconciliation can put an end to the daily suffering,” Professor Abusada said.